Links

Miscellany

08 December 11 - 23:17Gamedeals "Store of the Year Edition".

On November 28th 2011 we issued the following press release:

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
BREAKING NEWS: Gamedeals said to be "too large a power-house" and asked to
"tone it down a little".

Reports have been issued that big box stores such as Best Buy and EB
have complained that the "little guy" is obviously gaining too much
power in the world of video game retail. As such they have done the
logical thing and tried to crush the competition. Rather than give in,
local video-game master-store Gamedeals has decided to give "the big
fellas a chance" by closing their Gastown location and renovating
their New West store to include a gamer lounge. "We can only hope to
recover from the damage done by this one local and independently owned
store" said the CEO of one of the larger retail outlets "Having them
sell games to customers at reasonable prices with friendly,
knowledgeable staff has been a real slap to the face of our business
model and the industry as a whole" he continued to comment while
counting money and laughing maniacally. We all know that we love and support
faceless corporations, so when they start getting hurt, it can't help but hit home.

A member of the Gastown Business Association put things into
perspective "Gamedeals was just too successful here. Gastown needs to
retain it's quiet off-the-radar image and they just attracted too many
people, it was time for them to go". Gamedeals' owner Brian Hughes plans to
"turn sour lemons into fucking lemonade martinis".

Gamedeals is still open for business at a respectable distance from
Vancouver in New Westminster right outside the Columbia Skytrain, and
is having a "Goodbye Gastown - Hello New Westminster" celebration on
Saturday December 3rd (event details to come).

The reality of the situation is that the local economy took a sharp downward spiral in September, then got worse in November. Every business owner that I spoke to was saying that things were a lot slower than they should have been. Hello another recession. To top it off, the video game industry is going through some major fundamental changes when it comes to how games are being purchased, distribution options & big-box shenanigans. Needless to say, we chose to scale back & re-focus in order to ride out the down economy.

This came at a time when we were planning to renovate New West anyway, so we took all the content of both stores & put them together... added some additional DLC (American Pop/snacks, Gamer Lounge & cafe, after-hours events, etc.) and thus the "Store of the Year Edition". We're sad to see Gastown go, but it is what it is and we're excited about all of the new possibilities that New West will bring in the new year.